Interview Lyle Lovett: man The horseman likes William Shatner ’

LLovett is a man of many hats. The Grammy-winning singer and singer is a horse actor and horse builder. He has a bachelor of arts degree in journalism, it is clear from the helpful way that he makes difficult names.

Lovett studied journalism in the late 1970s in Texas A&M University, where he wrote for the student newspaper. The Battalion. “Bryan City Council was my regular blow, so I had to go to lots of meetings. We enjoyed writing entertainment stories and would be a great advocate of music interviews, ”he says to me. Singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith was the first person. Lovett, who played occasional gigs in cafes and bars at the time, recalls that she wanted to “process” and why in the world she would want to be a songwriter. “At the end of the day my questions were designed to give me the confidence that playing music would be okay.” T

Lovett was always interested in a language and expressed “the sum of the sentence someone could use”. While attending Lutheran school near Houston, he started writing a song he could easily play on the guitar. By the time he came to record his first anonymous album in 1986, it was clear to the music industry that his gift to write rich colorful songs. “There are songs on my first album that I wrote as a youngster. I wrote the song “Give Back My Heart” when I was 17 years old.

We will tell you what is true. You can create your own opinion.

It is difficult to categorize the song Lyle Lovett, the range of 11 studio albums he has recorded for thirty years. It can be funny (as on the add-on, the theme “If I was a Boat”); cool (“Creeps Like Me”) appears on a storyteller who kills his grandmother and makes a ring from his gold tooth); “We Were Always There” is an exciting song about the death of his father; and only clear sweet (“I don't know anyone”).

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1/40 Nirvana – "All Apologies"

Nirvana was the main leader in bloody bloody hearts. But their slower songs have become unjustly unfavorable as the years have passed. Has Kurt Cobain ever expressed his anger and anger on the best song from his 1993 song art song in Utero?

All Apologies – sent a matrix from the bondage – to his wife, Courtney Love, and their daughter, Frances Bean. Six months later, Cobain would take his own life. No other composition expresses lighter the despair that was laid to fully wear and the chest interfere with love he felt for his family. Her circumstances are still tragic but her message – she loves after we have gone – is progressing. PE

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2/40 Nine Inch Nails – "Hurt"

“And you could all have it / my empire will let you down / I will hurt you.” T

Trent Reznor made a diagnosis of his addiction to self-destruction – he never confirmed that the song refers to heroin use or would not – probably because of Johnny Cash's 2002 cover. All, the terrible lyricism and the terrible beauty already present and right in Reznor. PE

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3/40 Joy Division – “Love Us Will Come Another” t

“Why is the bedroom so cold turned on your side? / Is the timing that I have defective, our appreciation so dry? ”

It could be said that too much of his semi-official status has been attributed to Joy's largest student disco. But in keeping with fresh ears, the human race of Ian Curtis's words is a dark glommer. His marriage was falling apart when he wrote the lyrics and he would take his own life shortly afterwards. But far from ugly conduct from this way “Love Will We Us Apart” Out like a funny guitar – sad and searing. PE

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4/40 Fire Arcade – "Sprawl II (Beyond Mountains)"

“They heard me singing and they told me to stop these things and just make the clock.” T

The greatest potential of the Arcade Fire and their favorite album, The Suburbs, could be getting the lower false part of suburban ennui. Many artists have attempted to talk about the proportionality of life claimed among the cultivation laws and the two-car-drive life-warrior in the sticks.

But Arcade Fire pointed out that there was frustration and a feeling of something better just above the horizon who will immediately be aware of anyone who grew up far from the bright lights, “Sprawl II Symbols” which sent Chassagne Régine let her sing as a bjork if bjork put shelves stocked in a supermarket while studying her degree at night. PE

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5/40 Beyonce – "Formation"

"I like my baby hair, with baby's hair and awesome / I like my nose negro by Jackson Five nostrils / I earn all this money but they won't bring the country out to me / I got a hot sauce in my bag, swag. "

Beyonce had made political statements before this, but “Formation” felt the most obvious. The lyrics become the power of his identity as a black woman from south to south and she puts her bragging under her wealth and refuses to forget her roots. In a society that women still consider for their success, Beyonce owns it, and makes a point to assert her power, including over men. “You could be just a black Bill Gates,” she said, but then she decides, really: “I can be Bill Gates's black bill.” RO

(Photo by Kevin Winter / Getty Images for Coachella)

6/40 Laura Marling – “Ghosts”

The locals, Marling, were 16 years old when she wrote her detached ballads – a diagnosis of the heart of teenagers with a flinty maturity that bounces the listener in the stomach. It is one of the most historical anti-love songs recently – and a reminder, despite the fact that the folk songs of mid-2000 were quite good, the descendants were considered hellish fandango. PE

Alan McAteer

7/40 LCD Soundsystem – "Lost Edge"

“I am losing my edge / For all kids in Tokyo and Berlin / I am losing my edge to Brooklynites in the art school in small jackets and I have a loan for the Eighties of immigrants.”

One of the best songs ever written about aging and being forced to make peace with the person you are going to. Before the mainstream hipster concept, the 30 things were crying the cold children – with their beards and trucker hats – ripping on his heels.

Coming from his experience as a too cool school DJ in New York, the song performs well as a satire of Nathan Barley-type trends. But, as Murphy rejects his pioneering influence, it is a bad pain running through the lyrics that give him his universality. PE

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8/40 Leonard Cohen – "So Long, Marianne"

“Well, you know I love living with you / but you forget me very much / I forget to pray for the angels / and then the angels forget to pray for us.” T

You could fill a complete ledger with Cohen colliery lyrics – couplings that cut half as a samurai blade so that you don't notice that you have happened until you suddenly get into pieces.

“So Long, Marianne” was addressed to his lover, Marianne Jensen, who met him on the Hydra Island of Greece in 1960. As the lyrics witnessed, they finally became ships in a long and sad night.

She died three months before Cohen, in July 2016. Shortly beforehand he wrote about his farewell – a codet for the ballad that came to define him in the wider world. “Let me know that I'm so close behind you, if you stretch out your hand, I think you could be coming to me… Goodbye the friend. Love without enthusiasm, you see down the road. ”PE

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9/40 The Libertines – "I can't stand now"

"Ultimate fitting for the start / you turn and regret our love from each other."

The great song of our time came down soon after Carl Barât and Pete Doherty wrapped their arms around each other and delivered this incredible platonic love song. . Has there ever been a very sharp break up when the pairs of Libertines took into account the ways in which the other way was perceived?

Shortly afterwards, Doherty's chemical habit would look out of the group and it could be a national mascot for drug addiction – Danny Dyer's sort of mark marks on his hand. But it would always be up to him and Barrat – and the rest of us – always “Can't Stand Situations Now”, a laundry list of a sorrow that gives you the right. PE

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10/40 Kate Bush – "Cloud"

" You are like my yo-yo / It was rough in the dark / What made it special / It made it dangerous / So I bury him / And forget me.

Few artists use surrealism as successfully as Kate Bush – or draw inspiration from such unusual places. So you have a “Cloudbusting”, because of the relationship between psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich and his son, Peter, who Bush lives with. How Peter's father is compared to a lively childhood memory is a great testimony to the ways in which the loss affects us as adults. DE

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11/40 Nick Cave – "Into My Arms"

“I don't believe in an interventive God / But I know, dear, that you do / But if I have moved down and asked him / her not to intervene when you come.” T

True, spew and coo and, written down, like something Robbie Williams could croon on his way back from the tattoo parlor (“And I don't believe an angel is there / But looking at you is that true ”).

But they are delivered by a direct transfusion from Cave-the-pulpit from Cave setting out his feelings to another significant person (views are shared whether he is directed at his eldest son Luke, Viviane Carneiro, or PJ Harvey). , which was briefly involved. It is all corrective, but like a lava from a volcano, it's all about burning it. PE

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12/40 The Sisters of Mercy – "This Erosion"

"On days like this / Sometimes like this I feel an animal deep inside / Heel to make money on the bent knees."

Andrew Eldritch is the forgotten great liqueur for his generation. The Russian / Mother of Russia was a message of the apocalypse and a review of attempts to wisely address the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

“This Corrosion” has never been better, and from the same epic Floodlands album, look at the three Lord of the Rings films from Mount Everest. Among the main choirs and guitars, what gives the words a lot of power – possible (or perhaps not) to the friendly event from Sisters Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams.

Either way, Eldritch draws strong pictures in the head of the listener, especially during the stream of approximation, without ripening off from The Necronomicon or HP Lovecraft or the Book of Exposure: The Musical. PE

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13/40 Ping Sultans FC – "Where am I Jumper?"

“It's okay to say that things can't be improved but / You haven't lost your new jumper / fresh wool, and perfect bites / The type of jumper doesn't make youches.”

Last year's mourning was found as something groundbreaking due to the first time it was aging – January 1992, that tougher was cast by the sultans in respect of woolen worn article. It is obviously playful and paring of full-filled indie lyrics (which had no shortage in the early nineties of shoe). But a piece of pain is deeply intertwined in the fabric of the song, so that the alarm is caused by an uncomfortable unease. PE

Flickr / Ian Oliver

14/40 The Smiths – "There Is Light That Doesn't Go Out" t

As with Leonard Cohen, you could spend the rest of your days discussing the biggest lyrics of Morrissey. But there was certainly no more perfect collection of couplets than the collection was in 1982. It is very sharp, with the narrator painting a death with a ten-ton truck as the last word in romantic displays. But the schooner Moz is nowhere else through the harmful light of the spiritual torment, and as a result there is a song that acts as a cosmetic joke and as a way of the abyss. PE

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15/40 Bruce Springsteen – "I am on fire"

“On the night I woke up with the sheets that are wetting / And a train running through / in the middle of my head / No but you could cool my desire.” T

Written down, Springsteen lyrics can stop ensuring that steel helmet is reinforced trapped – read as a dream Bud Light commercial. The delivery is very critical, very creditable, who believe they are alive.

And he did not write a more perfect verse than this poem about a prohibited desire from 1984 which was born in the US. Julianne Phillips was working with the model actor / model at that time although he was already connected with his wife Patti Scialfa, who recently joined E-Street Band as a support singer. Therefore the points of the song need not be scrutinized, as rust and vibration are blended in one of the most combustible cocktails in mainstream rock. PE

(Photo by Brian But / Getty Images for Bob Woodruff Foundation) t

16/40 Tori Amos – "Father Lucifer"

“He says it's a watercolor color / He says that I run and then run a rhythm and then a rhythm / I didn't see me watching from the plane / He threw a tear and then he threw our apple seed. ”

Miss a strict baptism judge, Amos always wrote about her dad issues. Father Lucifer was further inspired by visions she had received and taking peyote with a man in South America.

The result was a fever that was approaching the family storm, based on prism of night-time crumbling. It is about love, death, God and the dark things in our lives that we cannot cope with – the word toy delivered by extortion. PE

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17/40 Public Enemy – "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"

“I received a letter from the government / The other day / I opened and read it / He said they were suckling / I wanted them to succeed or no matter what I gave & # 39 I never said.

The Decade of Years before Black, Chuck D and Public Enemy expressed the truth about daily suffering for millions of African Americans. Black Steel is a rejection of a pump, which is then covered by a Tricky tourist, to be co-opted into American American mythology – a message that could be said to be relevant today as it started the doors. years ago. PE

Secret Garden Party

18/40 Kendrick Lamar – "Swimming Pool (Drank)"

“At first you get a pool full of liquor, then you dive there / Pool full of liquor, then you dive there / I immerse a few bottles, then I see 'em all flock.'

Lamar is widely accepted as one of the most hip-hop liqueurs. It was never more bitter than this early confession – a rumor of his youth who had been in poverty and the addiction that violated such a fire in Compton and Chicago. In addition, there is an early warning of the devastating seizures as Kendrick is asked to take part in an excessive excess hip hop tradition and will lose himself in an intoxicating liquor and deprivation bath. PE

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19/40 Prince – "Sign the Times"

“A slim man died of a great disease with a little name / By chance his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she did the same thing.” T

The prince's lyrics always felt like an extension of his false dream person and, even when the African-American community was very meaningful to Reagan's reactive politics, the prince lived in his own life. He broke back to earth with his 1987 masterpiece – and his title track, a great reflection on gang violence, Aids, political instability and natural disaster. PE

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20/40 Rolling Stones – "Gimme Shelter"

"War, children, there is only a shot away / There is only a shot away."

No one took the violent unrest at the end of the sixties better than Mick, Keith and co. Of course, all of them were “Gimme Shelter”. Today, the credit for his incredible power goes deep with Merry Clayton's support voice.

But the majestic Satanic comes from the lyrics – who spoke to the pandemonium of the era and the sense that a civilization could land at any time. PE

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21/40 David Bowie – "Station to Station"

“As soon as mountains were on the mountains / And when the sun birds were rising to / And when I couldn't be down / searching and searching.” T

What are the Bowie lyrics to agree out? Mystery of Bewlay Brothers gordian? The meta-horror film from Ashes to ashes? The will and the latest testimony was on Blackstar completely – a ticking clock of record that moved into something else completely when Bowie died three days after his release?

You could stay up all night arguing so we only see one of the big people – the cross-continental adventure that encompasses the title track to the Station to the Station. He records, in the darkest days of the LA Bowie drug stage, the trace for Europe that he abandoned and soon returned to his period in Berlin.

That's all, Bowie makes the line “it's not the side effects of cocaine…” you think is an announcement of ancient wisdom. PE

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22/40 Oasis – "Supersonic"

“She did it with a doctor on a helicopter / She is sniffin in her tissue / Sellin the Big Issue.”

There is a shameless look and there is a claim that Noel Gallagher is a wonderful liqueur. And yet, Oasis's biggest and most popular goal is the most enjoyable.

“Elsa” ran with “Alka Seltzer”, as Noel does this Morning Morning Glory break, a sign of a strong voyage – but he is surprised at his lack of sophistication. A real wax, clever by Martin Amis etc, could not hold a candle to Oasis and be very succinct. PE

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23/40 The World – "Slippy Born"

“You had a chemical boy / I've grown so close to you / your boyfriend and you're just scrapping a boy.”

The song “lager, lager, lager” became ironic in one of the quickest moments in pop Nineties. Underworld never wanted to be a star and made an active campaign against releasing their contribution to the Trainspotting score as one. But there is no denial of the glorious breed associated with this peak – or the reluctance of the word play of Karl Hyde. That is the rare dance track that reveals hidden depths when you sit down with the lyrics. PE

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24/40 Fleetwood Mac – "Landslide"

"And I saw my reflection in the hills covered with snow / Until the landslide pulled me down"

Stevie Nicks was just 27 years old when she wrote one of the most important and gloomy things about how people change over time, and the fear that everything you worked for give up. DE

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25/40 Paul Simon – "Graceland"

“She comes back to tell me she is gone / Because I didn't know that I didn't know my bed.” T

With contributions from Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Boyoyo Boys, Simon 1986's masterpiece album is now regarded as a world-leading world music and pop music. But it was also a broken record crying at the end of his 11-month marriage with Carrie Fisher. The pain of separation is set to naked on the title road, where it ignores the dissolution of the relationship. PE

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26/40 Lou Reed – "Walk on the Wild Side"

"Candy came out of the island / In the back room everyone loved her / But she did not lose her head / Even when she was giving one / she says, hey the child, climb a walk on the wild side."

Reed's most famous song gave tribute to all the colorful characters he knew in New York City. Released three years after the Stonewall riots, “Walk on the Wild Side” embraced and celebrated the “other” in simple, beautiful terms. The seventies showed a major change in visibility for LGBT + people, and with this road, Reed confirmed that he was a proud ally. DE

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27/40 Sharon Van Etten – "Every time the sun comes up"

“People say I am surprised / But what happens when I have two? I wash your dishes, but I think in your bathroom.

The breakdown of the 10-year relationship has contributed some of the most difficult songs to New Jersey's fourth album. Are we there. She takes no prisoner on the closed road – a story about indigenous rent that is caused directly by Van Etten's eye on medium, gloomy, worthwhile detail. PE

Ryan Pfluger

28/40 Patti Smith – “Gloria”

"Jesus died of a man's sins but not with me / Meltin 'in a pot of thieves / Wild card up my sleeve / The thick heart of the stone / My sins my own / I own them

The song launched a thousand punk bands. It takes three minutes to go to the Van Morrison choir on Patti Smith's refurbishment of “Gloria”, where she prepares after a girl who sucks through the window at a party. Previously, there is poetry. Snarls and she shrieks as her vocal cords could rip. The lyrics of Arthur Rimbaud and Baudelaire are popular with Jim Morrison. DE

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29/40 The Eagles – "California Hotel"

“She was standing in the door / I heard the mission clock / And I was thinking about myself / This could be heaven or this could be a hell.”

Desperate descent cry from the great steam rock of the seventies. By the end of the decade the Eagles were fully fed by each other and covered with fame. The song and fiction is a metaphor for life in a successful rock band – The California Hotel: “You can check out whenever you like / but you can't go away.” Meanwhile the images were hallucinogenic inspired by late night driving through LA, the streets are empty, which is very stressed. PE

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30/40 Thin Lizzy – "The boys are back home"

“Guess who came straight back today / The wild boys who were away / did not change so much to say / But a man, I think cats are still crazy.” T

Raising a series of confidence in the form of music – and a celebration of going back to your roots and reconnecting with its subjects. Phil Lynott's childhood memories of Manchester's criminal gang inspired most of Lizzy's thin. The members of the gang were always in prison and outside and the song imagines one of their reunions – even by checking their favorite add-on names of Dino's Bar and Grill where the drink enters and that spill blood ”. PE

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31/40 Nina Simone – "Four Women"

"I won't see the first mother I see / My life was too rough / I'm terrible bitter these days / Because my parents were slaves."

On his 1966 Wild and the Wind album, Simone shows four characters – Aunt Sarah, Saffronia, Sweet Thing and Peaches – who represent different parts of the permanent slave trade. Some critics caused racial stereotyping, but in Simone's case, these women had the freedom to define themselves that gave them power. DE

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32/40 St. Vincent – "Digital Witness" t

“Digital witnesses / what is sleep worth? / If I can't show it, if you couldn't see me / What can I do?

One of the best songs written about the intimacy of the intimacy was the internet. Annie Clark, a songwriter of St Vincent – aka, sang about how our social narcissism was inspired by social media and gave us a false understanding of our place in the world. PE

Anthony Harvey / Getty Images

33/40 Frank Ocean – "Pink + White"

"Up to the air from the pool / You have a knee down to the dry land / Kiss the Earth to pour you You gave tools to you just to stay alive / And make it up when the sun is destroyed. "

He has co-written with Pharrell and Tyler, the Creator, “Pink + White” an album like Blonde Frank Ocean. He is singing – with a smooth and unexploded delivery – that there are serious similar lyrics in the past, from the perspective of the town that follows. DE

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34/40 Rufus Wainwright – "Dinner at Eight"

“If I want to see the tears in your eyes / Then I know that he had to be / Long ago, really in the white snow that is escaping / You liked me.” T

Man of the piano, Wainwright, can be too ornamental for the sake of himself. But how he comes to blow in this freedom by describing a violent disagreement with his father. Loudon III, a culture man in his own right, walked out to the family when Rufus was a baby and the bugs were simmering forward.

They cooked over at the Rolling Stone photo compass which Rufus wanted his father to want to enter Rolling Stone and his father did not take the insult down. Wainwright is the youngest person who put the dispute in place as a fat rush at the dinner table. PE

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35/40 Bob Dylan – "It's OK, Ma (I am Ble Bleeding)"

"Specified threats, bluff with scorn / Notes about suicide disappearing / From the fool's gold mouth / words are broken at the hollow horn / He proves that he is not busy being born / He is busy dying."

“Alright Ma” is a cornerstone of Dylan's career which reveals his transformation from politics until he gets all the wording in Western culture. He also refers to the Book of Ecclesiastes but also Elvis Presley, and he gives an insight into a man whose views are not in keeping with the world around him. DE

(Photo by Express Newspapers / Getty Images)

36/40 ABBA – "Winner is All"

“I don't want to talk / About the things we went out / Who is disturbing me / Its history now.”

The first and last word in fracture ballads. The consensus is that Björn Ulvaeus wrote it because of his divorce from the superintendent Agnetha Fältskog, although he has always rejected this, saying “the experience is divorce, but it is fiction”. Whether or not there is an objection to excessive impact, it is searching as Fältskog describes the separation from the other party's perspective. PE

4/40 Dóiteáin Stuara – "Sprawl II (Sléibhte Beyond)"

“They heard me singing and they told me to stop / Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock.”

Locating the dreamy underside of suburban ennui was perhaps the crowning achievement of Arcade Fire and their finest album, The Suburbs. Many artists have tried to speak to the asphyxiating conformity of life amid the manicured lawns and two-cars-in-the-drive purgatory of life in the sticks.

But Arcade Fire articulated the frustrations and sense of something better just over the horizon that will be instantly familiar to anyone who grew up far away from the bright lights, “Sprawl II”’s keening synths gorgeous counterpointed by Régine Chassagne who sings like Bjork if Bjork stocked shelves in a supermarket while studying for her degree by night. EP

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5/40 Beyonce – "Formation"

"I like my baby hair, with baby hair and afros / I like my negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils / Earned all this money but they&#39;ll never take the country out me / I got hot sauce in my bag, swag."

Beyonce had made politically charged statements before this, but “Formation” felt like her most explicit. The lyrics reclaim the power in her identity as a black woman from the deep south and have her bragging about her wealth and refusing to forget her roots. In a society that still judges women for boasting about their success, Beyonce owns it, and makes a point of asserting her power, including over men. “You might just be a black Bill Gates in the making,” she muses, but then decides, actually: “I might just be a black Bill Gates in the making.” RO

(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Coachella)

6/40 Laura Marling – “Ghosts”

“Lover, please do not / Fall to your knees / It’s not Like I believe in / Everlasting love.”

Haunted folkie Marling was 16 when she wrote her break-out ballad – a divination of teenage heartache with a streak of flinty maturity that punches the listener in the gut. It’s one of the most coruscating anti-love songs of recent history – and a reminder that, Mumford and Sons notwithstanding – the mid 2000s nu-folk scene wasn’t quite the hellish fandango posterity has deemed it. EP

Alan McAteer

7/40 LCD Soundsystem – "Losing My Edge"

“I’m losing my edge / To all the kids in Tokyo and Berlin / I&#39;m losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered Eighties.”

One of the best songs ever written about ageing and being forced to make peace with the person you are becoming. Long before the concept of the “hipster” had gone mainstream, the 30-something James Murphy was lamenting the cool kids – with their beards and their trucker hats – snapping at his heels.

Coming out of his experiences as a too-cool-for school DJ in New York, the song functions perfectly well as a satire of Nathan Barley-type trendies. But, as Murphy desperately reels off all his cutting-edge influences, it’s the seam of genuine pain running through the lyrics that give it its universality. EP

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8/40 Leonard Cohen – "So Long, Marianne"

“Well you know that I love to live with you/ but you make me forget so very much / I forget to pray for the angels / and then the angels forget to pray for us.”

You could fill an entire ledger with unforgettable Cohen lyrics – couplets that cut you in half like a samurai blade so that you don’t even notice what’s happened until you suddenly slide into pieces.

“So Long, Marianne” was devoted to his lover, Marianne Jensen, whom he met on the Greek Island of Hydra in 1960. As the lyrics attest, they ultimately passed like ships in a long, sad night.

She died three months before Cohen, in July 2016. Shortly beforehand he wrote to her his final farewell – a coda to the ballad that had come to define her in the wider world. “Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine… Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.” EP

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9/40 The Libertines – "Can&#39;t Stand Me Now"

"An end fitting for the start / you twist and tore our love apart."

The great pop bromance of our times came crashing down shortly after Carl Barât and Pete Doherty slung their arms around each others shoulders and delivered this incredible platonic love song. Has a break-up dirge ever stung so bitterly as when the Libertines duo counted the ways in which each had betrayed the other?

Shortly afterwards, Doherty’s spiralling chemical habit would see him booted out of the group and he would become a national mascot for druggy excess – a sort of Danny Dyer with track-marks along his arm. But he and Barât – and the rest of us – would always have “Can’t Stand Me Now”, a laundry list of petty betrayals that gets you right in the chest. EP

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10/40 Kate Bush – "Cloudbusting"

"You&#39;re like my yo-yo/ That glowed in the dark/ What made it special/ Made it dangerous/ So I bury it/ And forget."

Few artists use surrealism as successfully as Kate Bush – or draw inspiration from such unusual places. So you have “Cloudbusting”, about the relationship between psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich and his son, Peter, the latter of whom Bush inhabits with disarming tenderness. The way Peter’s father is compared to such a vivid childhood memory is a perfect, haunting testimony to the ways we are affected by loss as adults. DE

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11/40 Nick Cave – "Into my Arms"

“I don&#39;t believe in an interventionist God / But I know, darling, that you do / But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him / Not to intervene when it came to you."

True, the lyrics spew and coo and, written down, resemble something Robbie Williams might croon on his way back from the tattoo parlour (“And I don&#39;t believe in the existence of angels /But looking at you I wonder if that&#39;s true”).

Yet they are delivered with a straight-from-the-pulpit ferocity from Cave as he lays out his feelings for a significant other (opinions are divided whether it is directed to the mother of his eldest son Luke, Viviane Carneiro, or to PJ Harvey, with whom he was briefly involved). He’s gushing all right, but like lava from a volcano, about to burn all before it. EP

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12/40 Sisters of Mercy – "This Corrosion"

“On days like this/ In times like these/I feel an animal deep inside/ Heel to haunch on bended knees.”

Andrew Eldritch is the great forgotten lyricist of his generation. Dominion/Mother Russia was a rumination on the apocalypse and also a critique of efforts to meaningfully engage with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

Ever better, and from the same Floodlands album was “This Corrosion” – a track more epic than watching all three Lord the Rings movies from the top of Mount Everest. Amid the choirs and the primordial guitars, what gives the nine-minute belter its real power are the lyrics – which may (or may not) allude to the not-at-all amicable departure from the Sisters of Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams.

Either way, Eldritch paints forceful pictures in the listener’s head, especially during the stream of consciousness outro, unspooling like an excerpt from HP Lovecraft’s The Necronomicon or the Book of Revelations: The Musical. EP

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13/40 Sultans of Ping FC – "Where&#39;s Me Jumper?"

“It&#39;s alright to say things can only get better/ You haven&#39;t lost your brand new sweater/ Pure new wool, and perfect stitches/ Not the type of jumper that makes you itches.”

Received as a novelty ditty on its debut in – pauses to feel old – January 1992, the Sultans’ lament for a missing item of woollen-wear has, with time, been revealed as something deeper. It’s obviously playful and parodying of angst-filled indie lyrics (of which there was no shortage in the shoe-gazy early Nineties). But there’s a howl of pain woven deep into the song’s fabric, so that the larking is underpinned with a lingering unease. EP

Flickr/Ian Oliver

14/40 The Smiths – "There is a Light that Never Goes Out"

As with Leonard Cohen, you could spend the rest of your days debating the greatest Morrissey lyrics. But surely there has never been a more perfect collection of couplets than that contained in their 1982 opus. It’s hysterically witty, with the narrator painting death by ten-ton truck as the last word in romantic demises. But the trademark Moz sardonic wit is elsewhere eclipsed by a blinding light of spiritual torment, resulting in a song that functions both as cosmic joke and howl into the abyss. EP

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15/40 Bruce Springsteen – "I&#39;m on Fire"

“At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet/ And a freight train running through the/ Middle of my head /Only you can cool my desire.”

Written down, Springsteen lyrics can – stops to ensure reinforced steel helmet is strapped on – read like a fever-dream Bud Light commercial. It’s the delivery, husky, hokey, all-believing that brings them to life.

And he has never written more perfectly couched verse than this tone-poem about forbidden desire from 1984’s Born in the USA. Springsteen was at that time engaged to actress/model Julianne Phillips though he had already experienced a connection to his future wife Patti Scialfa, recently joined the E-Street Band as a backing singer. Thus the portents of the song do not require deep scrutiny, as lust and yearning are blended into one of the most combustible cocktails in mainstream rock. EP

(Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for Bob Woodruff Foundation)

16/40 Tori Amos – "Father Lucifer"

“He says he reckons I&#39;m a watercolour stain/ He says I run and then I run from him and then I run/ He didn&#39;t see me watching from the aeroplane/ He wiped a tear and then he threw away our apple seed.”

The daughter of a strict baptist preacher, Amos constantly wrote about her daddy issues. Father Lucifer was further inspired by visions she had received whilst taking peyote with a South American shaman.

The result was a feverish delving into familial angst, framed by a prism of nightmarish hallucination. It’s about love, death, God and the dark things in our life we daren’t confront – the rush of words delivered with riveting understatement. EP

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17/40 Public Enemy – "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"

“I got a letter from the government/ The other day/I opened and read it/It said they were suckers/ They wanted me for their army or whatever/ Picture me given&#39; a damn, I said never.”

Decades before Black Lives Matter, Chuck D and Public Enemy were articulating the under siege reality of daily existence for millions of African-Americans. Black Steel, later covered by trip-hopper Tricky, is a pummelling refusal to be co-opted into American’s Land of the Free mythology – a message arguably as pertinent today as when it kicked down the doors 30 years ago. EP

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18/40 Kendrick Lamar –" Swimming Pool (Drank)"

“First you get a swimming pool full of liquor, then you dive in it/ Pool full of liquor, then you dive in it/ I wave a few bottles, then I watch &#39;em all flock”.

Lamar is widely acknowledged as one of contemporary hip-hop’s greatest lyricists. He was never more searing than on this early confessional – a rumination on his poverty-wracked childhood and the addictions that ripped like wildfire through his extended family in Compton and Chicago. There is also an early warning about the destructive temptations of fame as the young Kendrick is invited to join hip hop’s tradition of riotous excess and lose himself in an acid bath of liquor and oblivion. EP

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19/40 Prince – "Sign O&#39; the Times"

“A skinny man died of a big disease with a little name/ By chance his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she did the same.”

Prince’s lyrics had always felt like an extension of his dreamily pervy persona and, even as the African-American community bore the brunt of Reagan-era reactionary politics, Prince was living in his own world. He crashed back to earth with his 1987 masterpiece – and its title track, a stunning meditation on gang violence, Aids, political instability and natural disaster. EP

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20/40 Rolling Stones – "Gimme Shelter"

"War, children, it&#39;s just a shot away/ It&#39;s just a shot away."

Nobody captured the violent tumult of the end of the Sixties better than Mick, Keith and co. Their one masterpiece to rule them all was, of course, “Gimme Shelter”. Today, the credit for its uncanny power largely goes to Merry Clayton’s gale-force backing vocals.

But the Satanic majesty also flows from the lyrics – which spoke to the pandemonium of the era and the sense that civilisation could come crashing in at any moment. EP

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21/40 David Bowie – "Station to Station"

“Once there were mountains on mountains/ And once there were sun birds to soar with/ And once I could never be down/Got to keep searching and searching.”

Which Bowie lyrics to single out? The gordian mystery of Bewlay Brothers? The meta horror movie of Ashes to Ashes? The uncanny last will and testament that was the entirety of Blackstar – a ticking clock of a record that shape-shifted into something else entirely when Bowie passed away three days after its release?

You could stay up all night arguing so let’s just pick on one of the greats – the trans-Continental odyssey comprising the title track to Station to Station. Recorded, goes the myth, in the darkest days of Bowie’s LA drug phase, the track is a magisterial eulogy for the Europe he had abandoned and which he would soon return to for his Berlin period.

All of that and Bowie makes the line “it’s not the side effects of the cocaine…” feel like a proclamation of ancient wisdom. EP

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22/40 Oasis – "Supersonic"

“She done it with a doctor on a helicopter/ She&#39;s sniffin in her tissue/ Sellin&#39; the Big Issue.”

There is shameless revisionism and then there is claiming that Noel Gallagher is a great lyricist. And yet, it’s the sheer, triumphant dunder-headedness of Oasis’ biggest hits that makes them so enjoyable.

Rhyming “Elsa” with “Alka Seltzer”, as Noel does on this Morning Glory smash, is a gesture of towering vapidity – but there’s a genius in its lack of sophistication. Blur waxing clever, winking at Martin Amis etc, could never hold a candle to Oasis being gleefully boneheaded. EP

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23/40 Underworld – "Born Slippy"

“You had chemicals boy/ I&#39;ve grown so close to you/ Boy and you just groan boy.”

The ironic “lager, lager, lager” chant somehow became one the most bittersweet moments in Nineties pop. Underworld never wanted to be stars and actively campaigned against the release of their contribution to the Trainspotting score as a single. Yet there is no denying the glorious ache of this bittersweet groover – or the punch of Karl Hyde’s sad raver stream-of-consciousness wordplay. It’s that rare dance track which reveals hidden depths when you sit down with the lyrics. EP

24/40 Fleetwood Mac – "Landslide"

Stevie Nicks was only 27 when she wrote one of the most poignant and astute meditations on how people change with time, and the fear of having to give up everything you’ve worked for. DE

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25/40 Paul Simon – "Graceland"

“She comes back to tell me she&#39;s gone/ As if I didn&#39;t know that/ As if I didn&#39;t know my own bed.”

With contributions from Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Boyoyo Boys, Simon’s 1986 masterpiece album is regarded nowadays as a landmark interweaving of world music and pop. But it was also a break-up record mourning the end of his marriage of 11 months to Carrie Fisher. The pain of the separation is laid out nakedly on the title track, where he unflinchingly chronicles the dissolution of the relationship. EP

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26/40 Lou Reed – "Walk on the Wild Side"

"Candy came from out on the island/ In the backroom she was everybody&#39;s darling/ But she never lost her head/ Even when she was giving head/ She says, hey baby, take a walk on the wild side."

Reed’s most famous song paid tribute to all the colourful characters he knew in New York City. Released three years after the Stonewall Riots, “Walk on the Wild Side” embraced and celebrated the “other” in simple, affectionate terms. The Seventies represented a huge shift in visibility for LGBT+ people, and with this track, Reed asserted himself as a proud ally. DE

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27/40 Sharon Van Etten – "Every Time the Sun Comes Up"

“People say I&#39;m a one-hit wonder/ But what happens when I have two?/ I washed your dishes, but I shit in your bathroom.”

The breakdown of a 10 year relationship informed some of the hardest hitting songs on the New Jersey songwriter’s fourth album. Are We There. She takes no prisoner on the closing track – a tale of domesticity rent asunder that lands its punches precisely because of Van Etten’s eye for a mundane, even grubby, detail. EP

Ryan Pfluger

28/40 Patti Smith – “Gloria”

“Jesus died for somebody&#39;s sins but not mine/ Meltin’ in a pot of thieves/ Wild card up my sleeve/ Thick heart of stone/ My sins my own/ They belong to me”

The song that launched a thousand punk bands. It takes three minutes to get to Van Morrison’s chorus on Patti Smith’s overhaul of “Gloria”, where she lusts after a girl she spots through the window at a party. Before that, there is poetry. She snarls and shrieks as though her vocal chords might rip. The ostentatiousness of the lyrics owes as much to poets Arthur Rimbaud and Baudelaire as it does to Jim Morrison. DE

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29/40 The Eagles – "Hotel California"

“There she stood in the doorway/ I heard the mission bell/ And I was thinking to myself/ This could be Heaven or this could be Hell.”

A cry of existential despair from the great soft-rock goliath of the Seventies. By the tail-end of the decade the Eagles were thoroughly fed up of one another and jaundiced by fame. The titular – and fictional – Hotel California is a metaphor for life in a successful rock band: “You can check-out any time you like / But you can never leave.” The hallucinatory imagery was meanwhile inspired by a late night drive through LA, the streets empty, an eerie hush holding sway. EP

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30/40 Thin Lizzy – "The Boys are Back in Town"

“Guess who just got back today/ Them wild-eyed boys that had been away/ Haven&#39;t changed that much to say/But man, I still think them cats are crazy.”

A strut of swaggering confidence captured in musical form – and a celebration of going back to your roots and reconnecting with the people who matter. Thin Lizzy’s biggest hit was in part inspired by Phil Lynott’s childhood memories of a Manchester criminal gang. The gang members were constantly in and out of prison and the song imagines one of their reunions – even name-checking their favourite hangout of Dino’s Bar and Grill where “the drink will flow and the blood will spill”. EP

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31/40 Nina Simone – "Four Women"

"I’ll kill the first mother I see/ My life has been too rough/ I’m awfully bitter these days/ Because my parents were slaves."

Included on her 1966 album Wild is the Wind, Simone depicts four characters – Aunt Sarah, Saffronia, Sweet Thing and Peaches – who represent different parts of the lasting legacy of slavery. Some critics accused her of racial stereotyping, but for Simone, it was these women’s freedom to define themselves that gave them their power. DE

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32/40 St Vincent – "Digital Witness"

“Digital witnesses/ what’s the point of even sleeping?/ If I can’t show it, if you can’t see me/ What’s the point of doing anything?”

One of the best songs written about the illusory intimacy fostered the internet. St Vincent – aka Texas songwriter Annie Clark – was singing about how social media fed our narcissism and gave us a fake sense of our place in the world. EP

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33/40 Frank Ocean – "Pink + White"

"Up for air from the swimming pool/ You kneel down to the dry land/ Kiss the Earth that birthed you Gave you tools just to stay alive/ And make it up when the sun is ruined."

Co-written with Pharrell and Tyler, the Creator, “Pink + White” stands out even on an album like Frank Ocean’s Blonde. He sings – with a gently swaying, almost resigned delivery – surrealist lyrics that likens a past relationship to a brief high, from the perspective of the comedown that follows. DE

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34/40 Rufus Wainwright – "Dinner at Eight"

“If I want to see the tears in your eyes/ Then I know it had to be/ Long ago, actually in the drifting white snow/You loved me.”

Piano-man Wainwright can be too ornate for his own good. But how he lands his blows here in this soul-baring recounting of a violent disagreement with his father. Loudon III, a cult folkie in his own right walked out on the family when Rufus was a child and the simmering resentments had lingered on.

They boiled over at a joint Rolling Stone photoshoot during which Rufus had joked that his dad needed him to get into Rolling Stone and his father had not taken the insult lying down. The dispute is here restaged by Wainwright the younger as a raging row at the dinner table. EP

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35/40 Bob Dylan – "It&#39;s Alright, Ma (I&#39;m Only Bleeding)"

"Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn/ Suicide remarks are torn/ From the fool&#39;s gold mouthpiece/ The hollow horn plays wasted words/ Proves to warn that he not busy being born/ Is busy dying."

“It’s Alright Ma” is a cornerstone in Dylan’s career that marks his shift from scrutinising politics to sardonically exposing all the hypocrisy in Western culture. He references the Book of Ecclesiastes but also Elvis Presley, and offers up the grim perspective of a man whose views do not fit in with the world around him. DE

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36/40 ABBA – "The Winner Takes it All"

The first and last word in break-up ballads. The consensus is that it was written by Björn Ulvaeus about his divorce from band-mate Agnetha Fältskog, though he has always denied this, saying “is the experience of a divorce, but it&#39;s fiction”. Whether or not he protests too much the impact is searing as Fältskog wrenchingly chronicles a separation from the perspective of the other party. EP

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37/40 Nas – "The World is Yours"

"I&#39;m the mild, money-getting style, rolling foul/ The versatile, honey-sticking wild golden child/ Dwelling in the Rotten Apple, you get tackled/ Or caught by the devil&#39;s lasso, s*** is a hassle"

Nas addresses both himself and his future progeny on one of the best tracks from his faultless debut Illmatic. Inspired by the scene from Scarface in which Tony Montana sees a blimp with the message “The World is Yours” during a visit to the movie theatre, it feeds back to the rapper’s own belief that certain signs will appear to convince you that you’re on the right track. DE

38/40 The Stone Roses – "I Wanna Be Adored"

A statement of intent, a zen riddle, a perfect accompaniment to one of the greatest riffs in indie-dom – the opening track of the Stone Roses’s 1989 debut album was all of this and much more.

The lyrics are supremely economical – just the chorus repeated over and over, really. But these are nonetheless amongst the most hypnotic lines in pop. Adding poignancy is the rumour that the Roses wrote it as an apology to early fans reportedly aghast that the group had signed a big fat record deal. EP

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39/40 The Beatles – "When I&#39;m Sixty Four"

"When I get older losing my hair/ Many years from now/ Will you still be sending me a Valentine/ Birthday greetings bottle of wine?"

There are hundreds of great songs about epic, romantic love, and there are hundreds of other Beatles songs that could have made this list. But this track from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – written by a 16-year-old Paul McCartney – is one of the greats for how it encapsulates a kind of love that is less appreciated in musical form. It’s less “I’d take a bullet for you” and more “put the kettle on, love”. It’s adorable, full of whimsy, and just the right amount of silly. DE

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40/40 Beck – "Loser"

“In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey / Butane in my veins so I&#39;m out to cut the junkie.”

“Man I’m the worst rapper in the world – I’m a loser,” Beck is reported to have said upon listening back to an early demo of his break-out hit (before it had acquired its iconic chorus) . This gave him an idea for the hook and he never looked back. The stream of consciousness lyrics cast a spell even though they don’t make much sense – ironic as Beck was setting out the emulate the hyper-literate Chuck D. EP

“I feel like my songs are just snapshots of the little things that I see,” the 61-year-old says. “They are not of conceptual scope. Songs Those baby step up to the ship journey. Me the big issues. I see people in the world

In 2017, he married long-term partner April 2008 and registered with the iconic label Verve Records. He says he remains "more nice people".

Lovett's mother and daughter, love, mother of children, love, uncle, alas and cousins ​​on the family farm operation t in Klein. His parents' record collection. A monthly record in the mail. Their collection was really diverse. They had Nat King Cole, big band albums by Glen Price and Lefty Frizzell. I was often left to my own devices after school and played in records records constantly. At the time, music was a daily topic in school. Songs What songs did you listen to on the radio? Did you like Elvis? What was your favorite Beatles album? '

One favorite in the Lovett household was Ray Charles. “He says,” says Lovett. “Ray Charles is such an influence from everything. He really personifies soul music. In his wonderful expression, you hear a direct connection to the gospel roots of that kind of music.”

Leigh No more

In the early 1980s, Lovett was helped by two great songwriters: Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. “They didn’t suffer fools and have very good standards. Or a paying attention. T Punto punktiko punkt punktiko punktik. And with their teasing, they actually felt like my uncles. Van Zandt was also a notorious gambler. Did Lovett ever bet with his friend? “Goodness gracious no”, he says with a laugh. “I would NEVER throw dice with Townes.”

Lovett talks with great warmth about being around his grandma’s farm house – especially at meal times – and he remains an avid breeder of cattle and owner of reining horses. “Beware of Bull” is a reminder of danger, though. In 2002, he was squashed against his fence by a severely broken leg.

“I knew better than to get in the pen with that guy,” Lovett recalls. “It's up to you and for your safety around animals. The bull has been raised. He was so mad that day. T My leg was crushed. T It´s miraculous that I can walk, I am thankful. My knee is a bit different but I am recovered as much as I can be.”

Lyle Lovett (Getty)

It’s not the only scrape he’s been in. King land inet land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land land. “It was the very best thing to do. I thought to myself, ‘man, this hurts.

Lovett 's interests are broad. He’s not the only musician to have appeared in a production of Shakespeare (Louis Armstrong played Bottom in a musical version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Broadway back in 1939), but is surely the only singer to have given Much Ado About Nothing a country music makeover. The Shakespeare Center in Los Angeles in 2010, in a production that also featured Helen Hunt and David Ogden Stiers.

“Our production was set in the Californian winery during the second act of the first act. Wrote “Night's Lullaby”, who included Sean and Sara Watkins. ‘Oh man’, I thought, am I wanted to rewrite Shakespeare ’.”

Performances on his own concert performances. “It made me realise how lucky I am to be able to be so fluid in what I do as a musician,” says Lovett. “If it is not going to play it, let's say what the playwright has put down. As a musician, you can be flexible and take the energy of an audience and let it inform what you do on any given night.”

He also speaks fondly about working with Richard E Grant (“gosh, he’s so lovely”) in director Robert Altman’s 1994 movie Prêt-à-Porter. Lovett played a character called Clint Lammeraux. “Robert insisted all the huge cast stayed in France. A group of us – including Richard, Tracey Ullman, Sam Robards and Lauren Bacall – hung out in Paris for 12 weeks like a bunch of schoolkids. It was just the most fun.”

Lovett also appeared in the Altman films The Player and Short Cuts and says the five-time Oscars nominee had a major impact on his life. “Altman was a great teacher. One of the ideas he reinforced to me was to stick to your idea and be confident about it. Altman exuded confidence, to the point that you could go over to his chair while he was directing a scene and almost just put your chin on his shoulder and watch with him. If he saw your interest, he encouraged it. He was happy to share his knowledge and that was a quality I didn’t expect and have not experienced often. Thinking of Altman sort of gives me strength when I am feeling insecure about what I am doing.”

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1/18 Rina Mushonga – In a Galaxy

It’s not uncommon for an artist to be influenced by the place they grew up in. Yet few are likely to have as much inspiration to draw on as India-born, Zimbabwe-raised and now Peckham-based artist Rina Mushonga.

The singer-songwriter’s nomadic personality is reflected in the vast scale of reference points on her new record, In a Galaxy. It’s technically a follow-up to 2014’s The Wild, the Wilderness, but the newfound boldness on this new work is startling.

Since that first record, Mushonga has begun to incorporate themes of empowerment into her work. On “AtalantA”, she showcases her muscular vocals, which are capable of switching between an airy lilt to a deep, emotional moan, as she sings lyrics inspired by the Greek hunter goddess who refused to marry. In a Galaxy is a record that takes you far beyond the borders of the world you’re familiar with, and into something altogether more colourful. (Roisin O&#39;Connor)

2/18 Deerhunter – Why Hasn&#39;t Everything Already Disappeared?

On Deerhunter’s eighth album, frontman Bradford Cox takes on the role of war poet, documenting the things he observes with a cool matter-of-factness, and heart-wrenching detail. Death is everywhere on Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?, as much as others may refuse to see it.

Already Disappeared is not an easy album. It’s often bleak and experimental: Cox’s vocals burst through like distorted, burbling fragments of static, or appear muffled amid the instrumentation. This is a new side of Deerhunter that gives the listener much to contemplate. (Roisin O’Connor)

3/18 Sharon Van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow

After a period of tumult, Sharon Van Etten’s fifth album is a reinvention. But beneath its hazy synths and electronics are songs of endurance and inner peace, of settling after a flurry of activity.

On Remind Me Tomorrow, written during her recent pregnancy and the birth of her first child, Van Etten dims her spotlight on toxicity and instead casts a warm glow behind the record’s psychic overview.

The anxiety and pride of impending parenthood converge on “Seventeen”, a paean to the invincibility and melancholy of adolescence. Addressing a younger version of herself, the 37-year-old sings of the carefree young and their mistrust of those defeated by time.

After years making peace with drift and uncertainty, she’s never sounded more sure of anything. (Jazz Monroe)

Ryan Pfluger

4/18 Bring Me the Horizon – Amo

BMTH frontman Oli Sykes wants to assert the fragility of the boundary between love and hate. Amo is a way of exploring that, even down to the title itself.
Closer “I Don’t Know What to Say” is cinematic in its symphonic drama – perhaps inspired by their 2016 shows at the Royal Albert Hall that featured a full orchestra and choir – and becomes the album’s most moving song. Over urgent, darting violin notes and soft strumming on an acoustic guitar, Sykes sings about the loss of a close friend, building to a hair-raising climax where he screams out the song’s title one last time. Amo won’t satisfy all of BMTH’s fans, but it’s certainly accomplished, catchy and eclectic enough to bring in some new ones. (Roisin O&#39;Connor)

5/18 Nina Nesbitt – The Sun Will Come Up, the Seasons Will Change

Nesbitt is back with her second LP, switching to a brand of soul and R&B-fused pop that feels bang on time, and suits her far better. The Sun Will Come Up, the Seasons Will Change has slick, polished production from Fraser T Smith (Adele), Lostboy (Anne-Marie), Jordan Riley (Zara Larsson), and Nesbitt herself.

Several tracks tap into a Nineties R&B sound that UK women, from Mabel to Ella Mai, are excelling at right now. Assertive tracks “Loyal to Me” and “Love Letter” nod to TLC’s “No Scrubs” and Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor”, but there is vulnerability, too, in the acoustic guitar-led neo-soul of “Somebody Special”, and the tender heartbreak on ”Is it Really Me You’re Missing”. (Roisin O&#39;Connor)

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6/18 Better Oblivion Community Center

This self-titled record, a loose but beautifully crafted collection of folk-rock songs, explores the kinds of anxieties intrinsic to the modern age – the longing to be at once noticed and invisible; the paralysing effects of limitless information, and the desire to do good versus the desire to be seen doing good.
As if to hammer home their parity, they even largely sing in unison – which might have had a plodding effect if the pair’s voices weren’t so distinct: Bridgers sings with a hazy assurance, Oberst with an emotive tremor. And when Bridgers’ melody does sporadically glide above Oberst’s, it is all the more potent for it. (Alexandra Pollard)

7/18 Ariana Grande – Thank U, Next

The album is packed with personal confessions for the fans – “Arianators” – to pick over. It lacks a centrepiece to match the arresting depth and space of Sweetener’s “God Is A Woman”, but Grande handles its shifting moods and cast of producers (including pop machines Max Martin and Tommy Brown) with engaging class and momentum. One minute you’re skanking along to the party brass of “Bloodline”; the next floating into the semi-detached, heartbreak of “Ghostin’”, which appears to address Grande’s guilt at being with Davidson while pining for Miller. She sings of the late rapper as a “wingless angel” with featherlight high notes that will drop the sternest jaw. (Helen Brown)

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8/18 James Blake – Assume Form

The perma-brilliant James Blake has flooded his fourth album – Assume Form – with euphoric sepia soul and loved-up doo-wop. His trademark intelligence, honesty and pin-drop production remain intact. But the detached chorister vocals of a decade in which he battled depression have thawed to reveal a millennial Sam Cooke crooning: “Can’t believe the way we flow, way we flow, way we flow…”

The warm splashes of piano that washed over that song break through the anxious rattle of dance beats on the album’s eponymous opener, the singer so regularly reviewed as “vaporous” promises to “leave the ether, assume form” and “be touchable, be reachable”. His own sharpest critic, he winks at the journalists who’ve called him glacial as he drops from remote, icy falsetto into a richly grained, deeper tone to ask: “Doesn’t it seem much warmer?” (Helen Brown)

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9/18 AJ Tracey – AJ Tracey

While he recognises his roots and includes plenty of nods to grime, AJ Tracey&#39;s magpie’s eye for a good melody or hook extends far beyond that. With the help of stellar producers like Cadenza (Kiko Bun), Swifta Beater (Kano, Giggs), and Nyge (Section Boyz, Yxng Bane), Tracey incorporates electronic music, rock, garage and even country on his most cohesive work to date.
The variety and scale of ambition on this album is breathtaking. Fans will be surprised to discover Tracey sings almost as much as he raps, in pleasingly gruff tones. Each track is a standout, none more so than “Ladbroke Grove”, a hat-tip to classic garage in which Tracey switches up his flow to emulate a Nineties MC. It’s a thrilling work. (Roisin O’Connor)

Ashley Verse

10/18 Sleaford Mods – Eton Alive

The album title of the year gives us an image of Brexit Britain trashed by Old Etonians David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, but the fifth studio work from the punk duo has more than social commentary to offer. There’s some of that, as vocalist Jason Williamson skewers documentary-makers who take advantage of the poor in “Kebab Spider” – “the skint get used in loo roll shoes” – but elsewhere this is a record that expands the idea of what Sleaford Mods could be.

Andrew Fearn’s beats are no longer just the backdrop, they’re threatening to take over this album. Surprising influences creep in, from Eighties R&B to the Human League, and on “When You Come Up To Me”, Williamson not only sings but there’s a melancholy tone breaking through the anger. “I don’t want to flip the page/ Of my negative script,” he intones on the final track, but there’s just a hint that he does. (Chris Harvey)

11/18 Julia Jacklin – Crushing

“Do you still have that photograph?/ Would you use it to hurt me?” asks Australian indie rocker Julia Jacklin, against the menacing throb of “Body”. The tension is stormy: imagine a mid-period Fleetwood Mac song, covered by Cat Power. It’s a masterclass in narrative songwriting.

Those who fell for Jacklin’s 2016 excellent debut, Don’t Let the Kids Win, will find a continuity of alternative attitude and vintage influences.
But there’s a deeper sense of personal connection to anchor Jacklin’s lyrical and melodic smarts. That snare drum keeps a relentless, nerve-snapping pulse throughout, with Jacklin sounding more confident in her contradictions: at once yearning to comfort a lover she’s dumped and then, on “Head Alone”, declaring: “I don’t wanna be touched all the time/ I raised my body up to be mine.”
Ah. Shucks. Grunge-rinsed, feminist-flipped, upcycled Fifties guitar an’ all: Crushing is a triumph. (Helen Brown)

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12/18 Little Simz – GREY Area

With praise from Kendrick Lamar, five EPs released by the time she was 21, tours with Lauryn Hill, collaborations with Gorillaz and two critically praised albums – including 2017’s excellent concept album Stillness in Wonderland – fans and critics alike wondered what else Little Simz could do to find the kind of mainstream success enjoyed by so many of her male peers.
Yet you’d be hard pushed to find a moment over the past few years where Simz has commented on this issue herself. Instead, she’s been busy honing her craft for Grey Area, which sees her land on a new, bolder sound assisted by her childhood friend – the producer Inflo [Michael Kiwanuka’s Love & Hate] – for a record that incorporates her dextrous flow and superb wordplay with an eclectic range of influences. The album takes in everything from jazz, funk and soul to punk and heavy rock, plus three carefully chosen features.
(Roisin O&#39;Connor)

Jen Ewbank

13/18 Solange – When I Get Home

Solange Knowles has never been coy about the intent behind her music. Beautiful arrangements and seamless production notwithstanding, you get the sense, each time she drop a project, that it serves a distinct, zeitgeist-shifting purpose.

This time, with When I Get Home, Solange has effectively given us permission to rest. Echoing similar movements seen in recent years, such as Fannie Sosa and niv Acosta’s “Black Power Naps” exhibition – which speaks to and hopes to remedy the socio-economic problem of higher rates of sleep deprivation among black people – the album has a calming, blissed-out quality, with its layers of sound and enveloping harmonies.

And where better to dream than from the comfort of your own digs? Whether it’s in the physical structure of a property that’s shaped you over the years, or in the familiar sounds of the music and culture that your people have crafted, there seems to be a call to return to what is familiar. (Kuba Shand-Baptiste)

Max Hirschberger

14/18 Foals – Everything Not Saved Will be Lost (Part 1)

FoalsMerging their asymmetrical early math pop with the deep space atmospherics of Total Life Forever and Holy Fire, plus added innovations – ambient rainforest throbs on “Moonlight”, deadpan EDM on “In Degrees”, Afro-glitch Radiohead on “Café D’Athens” – they’ve created an inspired album of scorched earth new music that, in all likelihood, will only really be challenged for album of the year by Part 2. (Mark Beaumont)

Alex Knowles

15/18 Sigrid – Sucker Punch

At her best, Sigrid throws out precision-tooled high notes like icicle javelins into vast, blue Scandi-produced skies. Then she growls like an Icelandic volcano preparing to disrupt western civilisation until we sort ourselves out.

l enjoyed the muted, Afro-tinged authenticity of “Level Up” and the conscious, pasty-girl reggae of “Business Dinners” (on which she refuses to be an industry angel) and I loved the Robyn-esque rush of “Basic” (which sees her yearning to shed love’s complications).

Sigrid has a raw energy and emotional briskness that can make you feel like you’re doing aerobics in neon leg warmers atop a pristine mountain. (Helen Brown)

Francesca Allen

16/18 Dave – Psychodrama

Tracks are at once astute and deeply personal in how they capture vignettes of everyday life and spin them into important lessons. “Black”, the most recent single from the record, considers what that word means to different people around the world, as well as to Dave. “Voices” has him singing over an old-school garage beat, fighting off personal demons.

“I could be the rapper with a message like you’re hoping, but what’s the point in me being the best if no one knows it?” he challenges on “Psycho”, which flips scattershot between beats and moods as though the track itself is schizophrenic. Dave spends Psychodrama addressing issues caused by the generations who came before him. By the end of the album, he sounds like a figurehead for the hopeful future.

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17/18 Karen O and Danger Mouse – Lux Prima

Lux Prima was born just over a decade ago from a drunken phone call from Karen O to Danger Mouse – real name Brian Joseph Burton – during which the pair vowed they would work on something together. It wasn’t until after O had given birth to her son, though, that recording finally began, and there is a beatific sense of contentment on songs like “Drown”, with its Kamasi Washington-like choirs and stately horns.

Danger Mouse is known for genre-hopping collaborations with artists such as Beck, the Black Keys and CeeLo Green, and he applies that approach here, too: the album is an impressive mix of blissed-out synths, psych-rock guitars and trippy hip-hop beats.

Lux Prima is an accomplished record – proof that two wildly different minds can work seamlessly together. Maybe drunk-dialling isn’t always such a bad idea. (Roisin O&#39;Connor)

Eliot Lee Hazel

18/18 The Cinematic Orchestra – To Believe

This is an ambitious creation, meticulously crafted and assembled. For a start, the range of guest performers is a cornucopia of contemporary soul and hip-hop collaborators: vocalists Moses Sumney, Roots Manuva, Heidi Vogel, Grey Reverend and Tawiah; strings player Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and keyboardist Dennis Hamm – both of whom have worked with Flying Lotus and Thundercat.

Ma Fleur was emotive and piano-led, its themes of mortality and the passage of life captured so evocatively in the Patrick Watson collaboration “To Build a Home” – which went on to soundtrack every TV show from Grey’s Anatomy to Orange is the New Black. To Believe, however, feels more expansive in reach. (Elisa Bray)

B+

1/18 Rina Mushonga – In a Galaxy

It’s not uncommon for an artist to be influenced by the place they grew up in. Yet few are likely to have as much inspiration to draw on as India-born, Zimbabwe-raised and now Peckham-based artist Rina Mushonga.

The singer-songwriter’s nomadic personality is reflected in the vast scale of reference points on her new record, In a Galaxy. It’s technically a follow-up to 2014’s The Wild, the Wilderness, but the newfound boldness on this new work is startling.

Since that first record, Mushonga has begun to incorporate themes of empowerment into her work. On “AtalantA”, she showcases her muscular vocals, which are capable of switching between an airy lilt to a deep, emotional moan, as she sings lyrics inspired by the Greek hunter goddess who refused to marry. In a Galaxy is a record that takes you far beyond the borders of the world you’re familiar with, and into something altogether more colourful. (Roisin O&#39;Connor)

2/18 Deerhunter – Why Hasn&#39;t Everything Already Disappeared?

On Deerhunter’s eighth album, frontman Bradford Cox takes on the role of war poet, documenting the things he observes with a cool matter-of-factness, and heart-wrenching detail. Death is everywhere on Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?, as much as others may refuse to see it.

Already Disappeared is not an easy album. It’s often bleak and experimental: Cox’s vocals burst through like distorted, burbling fragments of static, or appear muffled amid the instrumentation. This is a new side of Deerhunter that gives the listener much to contemplate. (Roisin O’Connor)

3/18 Sharon Van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow

After a period of tumult, Sharon Van Etten’s fifth album is a reinvention. But beneath its hazy synths and electronics are songs of endurance and inner peace, of settling after a flurry of activity.

On Remind Me Tomorrow, written during her recent pregnancy and the birth of her first child, Van Etten dims her spotlight on toxicity and instead casts a warm glow behind the record’s psychic overview.

The anxiety and pride of impending parenthood converge on “Seventeen”, a paean to the invincibility and melancholy of adolescence. Addressing a younger version of herself, the 37-year-old sings of the carefree young and their mistrust of those defeated by time.

After years making peace with drift and uncertainty, she’s never sounded more sure of anything. (Jazz Monroe)

Ryan Pfluger

4/18 Bring Me the Horizon – Amo

BMTH frontman Oli Sykes wants to assert the fragility of the boundary between love and hate. Amo is a way of exploring that, even down to the title itself.
Closer “I Don’t Know What to Say” is cinematic in its symphonic drama – perhaps inspired by their 2016 shows at the Royal Albert Hall that featured a full orchestra and choir – and becomes the album’s most moving song. Over urgent, darting violin notes and soft strumming on an acoustic guitar, Sykes sings about the loss of a close friend, building to a hair-raising climax where he screams out the song’s title one last time. Amo won’t satisfy all of BMTH’s fans, but it’s certainly accomplished, catchy and eclectic enough to bring in some new ones. (Roisin O&#39;Connor)

5/18 Nina Nesbitt – The Sun Will Come Up, the Seasons Will Change

Nesbitt is back with her second LP, switching to a brand of soul and R&B-fused pop that feels bang on time, and suits her far better. The Sun Will Come Up, the Seasons Will Change has slick, polished production from Fraser T Smith (Adele), Lostboy (Anne-Marie), Jordan Riley (Zara Larsson), and Nesbitt herself.

Several tracks tap into a Nineties R&B sound that UK women, from Mabel to Ella Mai, are excelling at right now. Assertive tracks “Loyal to Me” and “Love Letter” nod to TLC’s “No Scrubs” and Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor”, but there is vulnerability, too, in the acoustic guitar-led neo-soul of “Somebody Special”, and the tender heartbreak on ”Is it Really Me You’re Missing”. (Roisin O&#39;Connor)

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6/18 Better Oblivion Community Center

This self-titled record, a loose but beautifully crafted collection of folk-rock songs, explores the kinds of anxieties intrinsic to the modern age – the longing to be at once noticed and invisible; the paralysing effects of limitless information, and the desire to do good versus the desire to be seen doing good.
As if to hammer home their parity, they even largely sing in unison – which might have had a plodding effect if the pair’s voices weren’t so distinct: Bridgers sings with a hazy assurance, Oberst with an emotive tremor. And when Bridgers’ melody does sporadically glide above Oberst’s, it is all the more potent for it. (Alexandra Pollard)

7/18 Ariana Grande – Thank U, Next

The album is packed with personal confessions for the fans – “Arianators” – to pick over. It lacks a centrepiece to match the arresting depth and space of Sweetener’s “God Is A Woman”, but Grande handles its shifting moods and cast of producers (including pop machines Max Martin and Tommy Brown) with engaging class and momentum. One minute you’re skanking along to the party brass of “Bloodline”; the next floating into the semi-detached, heartbreak of “Ghostin’”, which appears to address Grande’s guilt at being with Davidson while pining for Miller. She sings of the late rapper as a “wingless angel” with featherlight high notes that will drop the sternest jaw. (Helen Brown)

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8/18 James Blake – Assume Form

The perma-brilliant James Blake has flooded his fourth album – Assume Form – with euphoric sepia soul and loved-up doo-wop. His trademark intelligence, honesty and pin-drop production remain intact. But the detached chorister vocals of a decade in which he battled depression have thawed to reveal a millennial Sam Cooke crooning: “Can’t believe the way we flow, way we flow, way we flow…”

The warm splashes of piano that washed over that song break through the anxious rattle of dance beats on the album’s eponymous opener, the singer so regularly reviewed as “vaporous” promises to “leave the ether, assume form” and “be touchable, be reachable”. His own sharpest critic, he winks at the journalists who’ve called him glacial as he drops from remote, icy falsetto into a richly grained, deeper tone to ask: “Doesn’t it seem much warmer?” (Helen Brown)

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9/18 AJ Tracey – AJ Tracey

While he recognises his roots and includes plenty of nods to grime, AJ Tracey&#39;s magpie’s eye for a good melody or hook extends far beyond that. With the help of stellar producers like Cadenza (Kiko Bun), Swifta Beater (Kano, Giggs), and Nyge (Section Boyz, Yxng Bane), Tracey incorporates electronic music, rock, garage and even country on his most cohesive work to date.
The variety and scale of ambition on this album is breathtaking. Fans will be surprised to discover Tracey sings almost as much as he raps, in pleasingly gruff tones. Each track is a standout, none more so than “Ladbroke Grove”, a hat-tip to classic garage in which Tracey switches up his flow to emulate a Nineties MC. It’s a thrilling work. (Roisin O’Connor)

Ashley Verse

10/18 Sleaford Mods – Eton Alive

The album title of the year gives us an image of Brexit Britain trashed by Old Etonians David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, but the fifth studio work from the punk duo has more than social commentary to offer. There’s some of that, as vocalist Jason Williamson skewers documentary-makers who take advantage of the poor in “Kebab Spider” – “the skint get used in loo roll shoes” – but elsewhere this is a record that expands the idea of what Sleaford Mods could be.

Andrew Fearn’s beats are no longer just the backdrop, they’re threatening to take over this album. Surprising influences creep in, from Eighties R&B to the Human League, and on “When You Come Up To Me”, Williamson not only sings but there’s a melancholy tone breaking through the anger. “I don’t want to flip the page/ Of my negative script,” he intones on the final track, but there’s just a hint that he does. (Chris Harvey)

11/18 Julia Jacklin – Crushing

“Do you still have that photograph?/ Would you use it to hurt me?” asks Australian indie rocker Julia Jacklin, against the menacing throb of “Body”. The tension is stormy: imagine a mid-period Fleetwood Mac song, covered by Cat Power. It’s a masterclass in narrative songwriting.

Those who fell for Jacklin’s 2016 excellent debut, Don’t Let the Kids Win, will find a continuity of alternative attitude and vintage influences.
But there’s a deeper sense of personal connection to anchor Jacklin’s lyrical and melodic smarts. That snare drum keeps a relentless, nerve-snapping pulse throughout, with Jacklin sounding more confident in her contradictions: at once yearning to comfort a lover she’s dumped and then, on “Head Alone”, declaring: “I don’t wanna be touched all the time/ I raised my body up to be mine.”
Ah. Shucks. Grunge-rinsed, feminist-flipped, upcycled Fifties guitar an’ all: Crushing is a triumph. (Helen Brown)

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12/18 Little Simz – GREY Area

With praise from Kendrick Lamar, five EPs released by the time she was 21, tours with Lauryn Hill, collaborations with Gorillaz and two critically praised albums – including 2017’s excellent concept album Stillness in Wonderland – fans and critics alike wondered what else Little Simz could do to find the kind of mainstream success enjoyed by so many of her male peers.
Yet you’d be hard pushed to find a moment over the past few years where Simz has commented on this issue herself. Instead, she’s been busy honing her craft for Grey Area, which sees her land on a new, bolder sound assisted by her childhood friend – the producer Inflo [Michael Kiwanuka’s Love & Hate] – for a record that incorporates her dextrous flow and superb wordplay with an eclectic range of influences. The album takes in everything from jazz, funk and soul to punk and heavy rock, plus three carefully chosen features.
(Roisin O&#39;Connor)

Jen Ewbank

13/18 Solange – When I Get Home

Solange Knowles has never been coy about the intent behind her music. Beautiful arrangements and seamless production notwithstanding, you get the sense, each time she drop a project, that it serves a distinct, zeitgeist-shifting purpose.

This time, with When I Get Home, Solange has effectively given us permission to rest. Echoing similar movements seen in recent years, such as Fannie Sosa and niv Acosta’s “Black Power Naps” exhibition – which speaks to and hopes to remedy the socio-economic problem of higher rates of sleep deprivation among black people – the album has a calming, blissed-out quality, with its layers of sound and enveloping harmonies.

And where better to dream than from the comfort of your own digs? Whether it’s in the physical structure of a property that’s shaped you over the years, or in the familiar sounds of the music and culture that your people have crafted, there seems to be a call to return to what is familiar. (Kuba Shand-Baptiste)

Max Hirschberger

14/18 Foals – Everything Not Saved Will be Lost (Part 1)

FoalsMerging their asymmetrical early math pop with the deep space atmospherics of Total Life Forever and Holy Fire, plus added innovations – ambient rainforest throbs on “Moonlight”, deadpan EDM on “In Degrees”, Afro-glitch Radiohead on “Café D’Athens” – they’ve created an inspired album of scorched earth new music that, in all likelihood, will only really be challenged for album of the year by Part 2. (Mark Beaumont)

Alex Knowles

15/18 Sigrid – Sucker Punch

At her best, Sigrid throws out precision-tooled high notes like icicle javelins into vast, blue Scandi-produced skies. Then she growls like an Icelandic volcano preparing to disrupt western civilisation until we sort ourselves out.

l enjoyed the muted, Afro-tinged authenticity of “Level Up” and the conscious, pasty-girl reggae of “Business Dinners” (on which she refuses to be an industry angel) and I loved the Robyn-esque rush of “Basic” (which sees her yearning to shed love’s complications).

Sigrid has a raw energy and emotional briskness that can make you feel like you’re doing aerobics in neon leg warmers atop a pristine mountain. (Helen Brown)

Francesca Allen

16/18 Dave – Psychodrama

Tracks are at once astute and deeply personal in how they capture vignettes of everyday life and spin them into important lessons. “Black”, the most recent single from the record, considers what that word means to different people around the world, as well as to Dave. “Voices” has him singing over an old-school garage beat, fighting off personal demons.

“I could be the rapper with a message like you’re hoping, but what’s the point in me being the best if no one knows it?” he challenges on “Psycho”, which flips scattershot between beats and moods as though the track itself is schizophrenic. Dave spends Psychodrama addressing issues caused by the generations who came before him. By the end of the album, he sounds like a figurehead for the hopeful future.

Press image

17/18 Karen O and Danger Mouse – Lux Prima

Lux Prima was born just over a decade ago from a drunken phone call from Karen O to Danger Mouse – real name Brian Joseph Burton – during which the pair vowed they would work on something together. It wasn’t until after O had given birth to her son, though, that recording finally began, and there is a beatific sense of contentment on songs like “Drown”, with its Kamasi Washington-like choirs and stately horns.

Danger Mouse is known for genre-hopping collaborations with artists such as Beck, the Black Keys and CeeLo Green, and he applies that approach here, too: the album is an impressive mix of blissed-out synths, psych-rock guitars and trippy hip-hop beats.

Lux Prima is an accomplished record – proof that two wildly different minds can work seamlessly together. Maybe drunk-dialling isn’t always such a bad idea. (Roisin O&#39;Connor)

Eliot Lee Hazel

18/18 The Cinematic Orchestra – To Believe

This is an ambitious creation, meticulously crafted and assembled. For a start, the range of guest performers is a cornucopia of contemporary soul and hip-hop collaborators: vocalists Moses Sumney, Roots Manuva, Heidi Vogel, Grey Reverend and Tawiah; strings player Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and keyboardist Dennis Hamm – both of whom have worked with Flying Lotus and Thundercat.

Ma Fleur was emotive and piano-led, its themes of mortality and the passage of life captured so evocatively in the Patrick Watson collaboration “To Build a Home” – which went on to soundtrack every TV show from Grey’s Anatomy to Orange is the New Black. To Believe, however, feels more expansive in reach. (Elisa Bray)

B+

Lovett met his first wife, Julia Roberts, while filming The Player and after their much publicised 21-month marriage ended, he made an album called The Road to Ensenada which featured Randy Newman. Lovett first listened to Newman as a student and got the chance to be his support act in Houston in the early 1980s (“it was just thrilling to be backstage with him listening to the World Series on the radio”).

It was a moment of serendipity that brought them together again. “We were recording a version of “Long Tall Texan” and I was wondering whether to add a vocal group,” recalls Lovett. “Thinking out loud I said, ‘Randy Newman would sound great on this track’. There was a quiet engineer called Bill Kinsley and he suddenly said: ‘I know Randy. Do you want me to call him?’ An hour later, up the walkway comes Randy Newman. It was terrific to work together and he then invited me to sing on ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’ for Story Toys. We got to perform at the Oscars, which is the only time I have attended. He included me in the whole red carpet thing… talk about getting to ride on someone’s coat-tails. Randy could not have been nicer.”

Perhaps the image of Sheriff Woody is in his mind, but Lovett suddenly laughs as he recalls a visit to London in 1987, when his record company took him out for a night at a country music festival at Wembley Arena. “I was fascinated to see all the British fans dressed in hats and western shirts. Although, I have to say, their penny loafers did not match the woolly chaps. You need cowboy boots.”

Lovett has come to the UK several times since his first gig that year, when he played with the brilliant cello player John Hagen in the small room at the long-gone Mean Fiddler in London’s Harlesden. It seems a long way from the O2 Arena he will play as part of the Country to Country Festival on Sunday.

He is active on social media and adds drolly that he follows a woman who tweets regular complaints about London’s transport problems. “I don’t post about my personal life,” Lovett adds, “but I do enjoy sharing snapshots of my work. I try to do it in a way that fills in blanks for people who might be interested in what I am doing. Taking photographs was always one of my favourite parts of being in journalism school.”

We chat about the state of journalism in the digital era. Lovett believes that an ethical approach is as essential as it was covering local Texas politics. “Just tell the truth, write the truth,” he says quietly. It’s something he does so well, in his authentic and brilliantly vivid songwriting.

Country to Country festival takes place at the O2 Arena in London between 8-10 March